


What's in a name?

by Dissenter



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!, 残響のテロル | Zankyou no Terror | Terror in Resonance
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Nana is Mishima Lisa, Nana is not as oblivious as she looks, Nana's secret past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 14:09:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10992522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dissenter/pseuds/Dissenter
Summary: Tsuna's new friends are dangerous that much is clear. But a long time ago Nana had dangerous friends of her own, and she won't deny her son the same choice.





	What's in a name?

**Author's Note:**

> Nana used to be called Mishima Lisa.  
> Yes it's another random crossover. Mostly because Nana is one of those characters it is almost impossible not to give a dark and mysterious backstory to.

A name is a thing given in love. Her mother had named her Mishamina Lisa but there was no love there. Or if there was it was the toxic possessive kind, the kind that held to tight and cut too deep and had driven her to run before it tore her apart. She had felt no grief when she cast it away, to try and begin a new life.

A name is a thing given in love, and so she had kept love in mind when she renamed herself. Nana which can sometimes mean seven. A name that was a number, in honour of two young boys that she once loved. Two boys with numbers that were names, that turned the whole world upside down, and her world with it. She grieved a little when she took up her name for them, to carry it into the future they would never have.

But they wanted her to live, to love and be happy. And so she refused to let grief hold her back. So she changed her name and moved to a different city and started a new life. She got a job, and a home, finally learned to cook properly, and learned to live her life. Sometimes she imagined she could see Twelve smile at her, that Nine was watching over her, she imagined they were proud, and it gave her strength.

She fell in love with a man named Iemitsu with an easy smile, and a romantic heart, and danger in his eyes. She fell in love with him and married him and bore his child. She never told him about the two boys with numbers for names. He had his own secrets, and for all her love, he would still have to tell her the truth before she would bare her heart to him in that way.

He was often away, Nana sometimes felt slightly grateful of that. She wondered if that made her a bad wife. She loved him, truly she did, but he wasn’t one of those boys who had turned her life upside down and made it worth living. He had come after, and he was loud and attention grabbing, and sometimes he felt like an intruder upon the silences that should have belonged to the dead. She was always glad to see him, but she was also glad he was only ever a transient presence in her life. That for most of the year he left her alone, with her peaceful house, and her sweet child, and the Icelandic music Nine had left to her, which she only ever listened to when she was alone. Left her with the memories of the life he never knew she’d lived.

Tsuna was painfully like her. Clumsy, and helpless, and utterly lacking in talent, a walking target to bullies, a disappointment to teachers. He was painfully like her but she was not her mother. She _refused_ to be her mother. She didn’t care if he was clumsy, or weak, or easily frightened, she just wanted him to be happy. She might not be able to solve his problems, might not be able to shield him from the bullies, or fix his failing grades, but she would make sure that home was _always_ a safe haven for him, that no matter how unbearable to world became he would always be able to find comfort at home. It was something she’d never had, so she knew exactly how important it was.

It wasn’t enough though, and she had to watch over the years as her sweet son became ever more shy and withdrawn. She wasn’t Twelve, she didn’t know how to tease him out of his shell and make him feel less alone, she did her best but it wasn’t enough, _she_ wasn’t enough. It broke her heart to watch.

Then everything had changed. Suddenly Tsuna had friends, and a tutor, and an enthusiasm for life outside their home that she hadn’t seen in years. She’d overheard more than enough in passing to know that Tsuna’s new friends and tutor might not be what most people would call good influences. That they were dangerous, and that they were dragging Tsuna into that danger with them. She made a decision early on to ignore it. Tell the truth, she was in no position to judge. After all, when she’d been their age she’d run away with terrorists and become their accomplice, and it had probably been the best decision of her life. For all the heartache it had left her with she would not have traded that choice for anything. If his mafia friends made Tsuna happy, that was enough for her. She was not her mother, she would not stifle her son’s happiness.

And Tsuna had been coming home more battered than before, there were strange and dangerous men appearing round every corner, and every few weeks there was some kind of serious property damage in the general Namimori area, but she’d seen the way Tsuna smiled now, more open and real than he had in years, and she couldn’t bring herself to care. She’d been willing to let the world burn before, and for Tsuna’s sake she would quite happily do so again.

She did care about his new friends. She couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the way they made Tsuna smile, although that was part of it. It was also the shattered fragility that lurked behind Gokudera kun’s aggression, that reminded her of a broken boy named Nine, and a girl named Five who was more broken still, it was Yamamoto kun’s smile that was more than a mask but less than the whole truth and made her think of Twelve and his smile like summer.

Tsuna’s friends were familiar to her in ways that she would never be willing to explain. It was the way Hibari kun and Reborn pretended not to care, when really they cared so much that it hurt, and she knew that response from a boy with eyes like ice who’d told her she didn’t belong, but never abandoned her. She saw Five in the desperate obsessive love Bianchi had for Reborn, in the brilliant broken insanity of Mukuro, she saw Twelve in the Sasagawa siblings, in both Ryouhei’s enthusiasm, and Kyouko’s honesty. She saw herself in Chrome, shy, and insecure, and not quite ready to understand she wasn’t alone anymore. She saw a thousand other parallels, and for all Tsuna’s friends were their own people, unique and wonderful in their own ways, there was a kinship, between them and those boys with names that were numbers, with the girl who was the same but an outsider even to them, with another girl, an ordinary civilian who they had carried along on their journey for a while, until their journey finally ended.

There was a kinship and so she felt comfortable with them in ways that an ordinary civilian really shouldn’t have. She sometimes caught Reborn’s eyes resting suspiciously on her and she wondered how much he knew or guessed. He was sharp, rather like Shibazaki in some ways, with the kind of experience Nine and Twelve had never been old enough to get.

Of all of Tsuna’s friends though, it was the little ones that bound her most deeply. Three children pushed and pulled about by the whims of those more powerful, she’d be a fool not to see a connection. She’d never had a chance to help the children that her friends had once been, but here and now, faced with three children whose circumstances weren’t all that different it eased something in her heart trying to keep history from repeating itself. To make sure that these children at least would not grow up knowing that nobody loved them. She would say their names, and say them with love, and it felt a little like redemption, a little like healing when they laughed and played like the children they were. For a moment she could have sworn she saw the ghostly shapes of Nine and Twelve watching over them with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Well at least it's not another neverending multi chapter. I have too many of those already.


End file.
